Paladins Getting Major Changes in WotLK
If you combine everything said in Paris during the Worldwide Invitational and the very limited snippets of discussion by Blizzard on the Alpha forums it’s safe to say that the Paladin class is probably going to have some serious changes to the way they work. The main emphasis being on reducing the random burst and unreliability of Ret, making Prot deal some more damage, and making Holy less of a boring two button (sometimes 1 button) job.
Here’s a bunch if quotes from Blizzard regarding Paladins in the expansion.
Quite honestly one of the reasons we saved paladins for last is because there is a lot we wanted to change with them. Paladins are changing probably more than any other class. The tiny little bit you heard at the WWI is just the beginning.
The discussion about a new healing spell was just to say yes, we think paladins need another healing mechanic. It isn’t finished yet. We don’t want to just hand them a thinly disguised druid or priest spell. We also want paladins to tank more actively and want retribution paladins to have a little better control over their damage without the bursts feeling quite so random. (And no, that’s not all we’re looking at).
It’s all coming. It’s just a lot of work. Try to stay positive. Everyone in the alpha was invited because they have a close connection to someone at Blizzard. You’re here because we value your feedback. (src)
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That’s a fair question. We knew we were going to make 3 pretty sweeping changes to classes in general that would all affect paladins. First we changed the way healing and damage stats work. Second, we changed the way party vs raid buffs worked. Third, we changed how much damage a tank is expected to deliver as well as reworking some of our itemization theories in general.
We figured it was easier to tackle those issues on comparatively easy classes like the warrior and priest before figuring out how we were going to have to change the paladin. Hunters got pushed to the back for a similar reason — we were overhauling how their pets worked and needed to nail those changes first before figuring out their new abilities and talents.
We still feel like we’re ahead of where we were on Burning Crusade with a more experienced team. So we’re not yet panicked about having enough testing time. (src)
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Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Cool, cant wait to hear what they figure out with ret. Probably my most favorite class/spec.
Jul 10th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
…..YES ABOUT TIME
I play a holy pally and thier are times when you look and go what am I needed for, because they can get what they need from other class,s for healing and res if you are an eng. and so on and so on. Can not wait to see the final rework.
One more did they say when the Wrath is coming out or did I miss that and is somewhere here?.
Jul 10th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
No word yet on release sorry but I’m on it.
Jul 12th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Fairly simple reasoning behind this.
Blood elfs came out with TBC, got to become the most popular race withing months, no warrior meant people rolling paladin more, thus more paladins are in play currently and so bliz is trying to appease the most people by fixing the palaidin. This is also the same reason why shaman will forever be thrown in the corner and wont be fixed EVER, give it up.
My main is an enha shaman so i´m pissed, since what im seeing in the alpha and the new talents is useless as of yet and im very disappointed.
Jul 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Can’t please them all.
Jul 13th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
does ne1 rlly use judgment of command? i think its rlly useless because it doesn’t do that much dam, and its easier to just keep rank 1 seal of command on cause it does the same amount of dam for barely ne mana.
also i think the new healing spell should be consecration. i think it would be rlly sweet to have a spell that does dam to enemy units and heals friendly units at same time. it would be unique, and kick ass.
Jul 14th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
@FootballKA - Yeah I agree with you man. Personally if the new changes to shaman go through it could solidify elemental as the strongest PVP tree, resto as a very strong PVP/PVE tree, and enhancement as a downright fuckall awesome leveling/PVE tree with some survivability in PVP
@jamesf - a consecrate that heals as well as does damage actually sounds REALLY fucking cool. Paladin tanks can build more threat by healing a melee heavy group around the boss as well as dealing some dmg.
Judgement of command is a pretty strong tool for doing burst damage as ret. I’m still protection and only 53 but from everything I’ve seen and read a good little rotation would be to judge crusader, wait until judgement is ready, stun with hammer of justice, then hit a macro that taps judge/crusader strike at the same time since judge doesn’t fire off the global cooldown. If you have some luck with crits you might do some really interesting damage, just don’t expect it to be anything close to dependable in it’s current form.
Jul 17th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I think paladins need a series of new healing spells, ways to avoid mana burns, cc, and so forth. I’ve got a 70 paladin i’ve played extensively on all 3 specs: holy is a joke, only thing we have against other classes is bubble (12 seconds in a 4 minute arena game?) and alot of armour. Ret is not so bad anymore, but it’s still ridiculously unfair that we have to side with warriors/rogues in order to be effective in 3’s/5’s. For ret i’m really calling out for a minor slowing effect on judgement of justice (20% talented would be great), a slightly less useable interrupt (so that we aren’t sitting there watching an enemy flash heal through everything we do), a way to not be completely useless when mana burned, and something akin to mortal strike. Ret paladins and enhancement shamans/feral druids are unfairly inferior to rogues/warriors because of their healing debuff, we need something like it.
Jul 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I use Judgement of command every time possible i see it crit for over 1500 so i dont see how thats hardly any damage… its almost a must to a stunned target
Jul 26th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Dulare- Take a second and actually think, yes enh. shammys are broken, but paladins are even more so. Blizz has taken notice to the pallys lack of healing multi targets and their inadequate dps compared to all of the other classes and decided to give them tools to adapt. Now you cant tell my you havent heard: “retlol” or any of those cat calls. With Wotlk, the Retribution Paladin is reborn.